The soil of Uganda is red. On occasion, it is a deep, soulful red – a red that winds along the blue of the Nile, circles the deep lake, or cuts like a liquid-ruby trail through hills of rich, shifting green. Often, though, the red is weary, deadened by time and neglect and sorrow - a dust that drapes the country like a thread-worn shawl. It is this dust, a brown-red, rusty shade of silence, that slowly coats the dresses of the village girls, the brand-new shop fronts full of promise, the leaves on the trees along scenic dirt roads – which might, themselves, be a shade of unimaginable emerald life but for the ever-creeping wash of rusted red.
That same dust coats the people too. Clouds rise behind bare, walking toes, and handkerchiefs wipe away the color of dried blood. Faces, here, are worn not only by sun and rain and work and time, but by the tireless, ceaseless dust that sinks into one’s pores and penetrates ones dreams. Wash yourself, and the water runs red off your body in streams, but it is still there, wiping red onto your towel, onto your sheets. The red is inside you – you ingest it with your food and breath it as you walk through the city. It gets into your nose and your mouth and your ears, lines the walls of your throat and your stomach and your soul.
When rain arrives the soil breathes in moisture like breathing life, and lies sated for a while. With the storms, however, come the red tides, water rushing like the blood of sacrificed sons through alleyways and slums, creeping up shop walls and slipping into homes of thatch and mud and nailed up metal. The red sea, carrying plastic bags, bits of wood and a million infections, parts only for the largest houses, and even then sweeps away bits of the base, leaving rubble in it’s wake.
On occasion, though, on occasion, when the wind dances through sunlight like kisses under an open sky, with trees of various green and brightly-clothed women walking by children that laugh, when the maize sways like waves grown tall and proud and the air smells like hope and song… on occasion, which is fairly often to be sure, the red shines like gold and glows like coals and sings with the warmth of a mother’s voice. It winds a path through hills and into the ocean-sky, and sings a song a thousand years new, welcoming each footstep as it comes, and forgetting none that have ever passed though.
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